The Palace of Impossible Dreams (40 page)

Jaxyn leaned back in his seat thoughtfully. “Do you have any idea who he's talking about?”

The scribe shook his head. “The Duke of Lebec, or of any other province for that matter, has the power to incarcerate any person they consider a threat to the crown, and may incarcerate them for as long as they wish without trial, if they consider it to be in the best interests of their province or of Glaeba.”

Jaxyn's eyes lit up. “They
do
?”

“It's a seldom-used power, my lord. One has to be very sure the confinement will pass the court's scrutiny if the prisoner or their family appeals to the king.”

What a pity Jaxyn hadn't known about that tidy little loophole when they'd caught Cayal. He'd have advised Stellan to do exactly that—lock him up and throw away the key—and then the Immortal Prince would never have met Arkady and managed to escape.

In hindsight, it probably wouldn't have worked. Cayal had been posing as a Caelishman, so there was all that nonsense going on with the Caelish ambassador. And Declan Hawkes had got involved when the immortal didn't die after they tried to hang him, which messed everything up, because Hawkes was the one who'd recruited Arkady . . .

Tides, it would have been nice if somebody had thought of it, though
 . . .

“If this man has been locked up for seven years, then I'm guessing there's nobody on the outside willing to make too much noise on his behalf. Does the king know about this?”

The scribe shrugged. “There would be no need for a duke to advise the king in such a matter, unless he believed the prisoner was a threat to the crown.”

“So the righteous and oh-so-irritatingly-upstanding Stellan Desean threw someone in gaol without a trial and threw away the key? Who'd have thought? Does this prisoner have a name?”

“The letter only refers to him as Prisoner Two-Eight-Two, your grace.”

“Write back to the Warden. Tell him he's to continue the current arrangement with Prisoner Two-Eight-Two until I've had a chance to interrogate him myself, the next time I'm in Lebec.”

“As you wish, your grace.”

“And when you're done with that, tell the new spymaster I want to see him.”

“To serve you is the reason I breathe,” Patches said with a bow.

Jaxyn wasn't listening, however. All he wanted to know was if Rye Barnes, the man he'd elevated from the ranks of torturer to spymaster, knew where to get his hands on a reliable assassin.

Eight thousand years of immortality had taught Cayal to be sceptical of fate or destiny. When he stepped off the small boat and onto the Outpost's tiny dock expecting to find Arryl, Medwen and Ambria, and found Arkady waiting for him instead, he wondered briefly if he'd been wrong all this time.

There didn't seem to be any other way to explain what she was doing here.

Arryl was standing a couple of steps in front of the Glaeban duchess, which meant Lukys's directions had been spot on, although there was no sign of either Ambria or Medwen, and no sense of them on the Tide, either. He hardly cared about that, given who he
had
found in this Tide-forsaken place.

He leapt out of the boat and jumped onto the dock, drinking in the sight of Arkady, who seemed almost as shocked to see him as he was to see her.

“Cayal!”

It was Arryl, and not Arkady, who found her voice first. The Sorceress of the Tide sounded stunned, which wasn't surprising. Her presence here, and that of her sisters, was supposed to be one of the best kept secrets on Amyrantha.

“Hello, Arryl,” he said absently, his gaze fixed on Arkady. He didn't care that he'd found Arryl, or where the others might be hiding. The sight of Arkady drowned out all other concerns, making him blind even to the pull of the Tide which was warning him there was another immortal in the vicinity.

“Tides . . . how did you find us?” Arryl's voice trailed off when she realised he wasn't listening to her. Given how long she and her friends, Medwen and Ambria, had been hiding out in the Senestran Wetlands, he guessed she was probably appalled at how easily he had located them. He imagined it would come as an even greater shock to her when he informed her that Lukys had known of their whereabouts for centuries.

But at that moment, Cayal didn't care about Arryl's distress or what she thought of his arrival. With eyes only for Arkady, he walked toward her instead. She made no move to come closer, but neither did she shy away from him.

Cayal stopped when he reached her, searching her face for some hint of
what she was thinking; what she was feeling.
Why was it every time I think I've put this woman out of my mind, she reappears?

“Hello, Cayal,” she said after a time.

“Arkady.”

“You're starting to develop a talent for turning up in the most unexpected places, aren't you?”

“I bow in deference to the master.”

That comment brought a faint smile to her face, which was all the encouragement he needed. He took her in his arms and kissed her on the mouth. She hesitated for a fraction of a second, and then her arms tightened around him and she kissed him back.

After a time, he touched his forehead to hers, drinking in the nearness of her. “Tides, you've no idea how many times I've dreamed about you,” he said in a voice only she was close enough to hear.

He expected her to respond in kind, but she just shook her head. “You've a very dull life, indeed, Cayal, if that's all you have to dream about.”

“I missed you.”

“
Missed
me? You told me you were trying to forget me. Why so glad to see me now?”

“I'm fickle,” he said with a shrug. “So don't worry. I'll probably go back to despising you soon enough.” He smiled again, kissed her briefly, took her by the hands and then turned to Arryl, only then noticing there were others waiting at the Outpost. Two of them were chameleon Crasii he dismissed as unimportant. The other male, at first glance, appeared human, and vaguely familiar . . .

And then he realised the powerful ripples he felt on the Tide couldn't possibly come from Arryl.

Cayal pushed Arkady away and turned to confront the stranger, drawing the Tide to him, ready to strike. “Who are you?”

“His name is Declan Hawkes,” Arryl said behind him, before the stranger could answer. “And he's here at my invitation. Settle down.” She would be feeling the power Cayal had gathered to himself, just as he could feel this strange immortal clumsily drawing on the Tide. She looked past him and glared at Hawkes. “
Both
of you.”

Cayal studied this new immortal warily, waiting for him to do something, wondering why his name sounded familiar. The man said nothing, just watched Cayal with the same cautious mistrust, as he gathered the Tide to himself.

“Tides, you're the Glaeban spymaster,” Cayal said after a few tense moments when he finally recalled where he'd seen this man before.

“Cayal . . .”

Laughing bitterly at the irony, Cayal suddenly understood why she was here. He turned to Arkady, “
This
is the man you wanted to save me from in Glaeba? The one you feared would torture and kill me? Funny how you neglected to mention he was immortal. He certainly wasn't the last time we met.”

“Declan's only been recently elevated to your ranks,” Arkady told him.

Cayal had been alive a very long time and he could read most people like an open book, particularly when they were angry about something. There was an edge to Arkady's voice that spoke of a bitterness running far deeper than mere surprise or concern at his own unexpected appearance or that this spymaster for the Glaeban king was now an immortal. Was that the reason she'd greeted him so warmly, with such uncharacteristic passion? Arkady, as a rule, was as ambivalent about her feelings for Cayal as he was about his feelings for her. The tension in the air around this isolated Outpost spoke of something far more complicated going on here. Something Cayal had a feeling had little to do with him.

Arkady's animosity toward Hawkes concerned Cayal less, however, than the realisation that somehow this man had found a way to
become
immortal, which was more than a little vexing. Cayal had killed several million people making sure something like that
couldn't
happen, ever again.

“How?” He didn't direct the question to anyone in particular. He just wanted an answer.

“We don't know,” Arryl said.

Cayal fixed his gaze on Hawkes. “
You
know, though, don't you?”

“And what makes you think I'd share the knowledge with you, even if I did?”

“Stop it!” Arkady said.

“Stop what?” Cayal asked, his gaze locked with Hawkes, the Tide swelling around them. The man had little control of what he was doing, but that didn't really matter. It was like standing next to Pellys when he was upset—he was full of raw, undirected, unfocused, and potentially dangerous power too.

“Stop snarling at each other like a couple of canines facing each other off over a bitch on heat.”

Cayal held back, although not because Arkady asked him to. Hawkes
was radiating power, but clearly had no idea what to do with it. Cayal felt torn between curiosity and rage. This immortal's very existence threatened everything he was working toward. Here he was, desperately looking for a way to die, and somehow this man had found a way to live forever.

Lukys needed to know about this.

If he doesn't already know.
The thought popped unbidden into Cayal's mind along with another random thought: Oritha telling him why Lukys had gone to Glaeba. “Tides, Lukys,” he muttered to himself. “What have you done?”

“Cayal?” Arkady said. She heard him speak but not caught the words, he supposed.

Cayal didn't answer her. Instead, he turned to Arryl. “How long have you known about this?”

“About a day longer than you, Cayal. What are you doing here?”

“I came to extend an invitation to you and the others.”

“On whose behalf?” Hawkes asked, bristling with animosity. “Your immortal friends in Caelum?”

Cayal turned to look at Hawkes.
Tides, he's ready to explode.
“Oh, so you know about them, do you?”

“I know a great deal more than you think.”

The anger in Hawkes was evident even to those not able to draw on the Tide.
Something very interesting was going on before I got here
, Cayal decided.

Beneath his feet, he could feel a slight tremble in the dock. Hawkes, out of either fear or ignorance, was about to let loose a natural disaster. A part of Cayal was horrified. Not because he particularly cared about an imminent natural disaster, but mostly because the Tide was still on the way back. It would be months, perhaps years, before it peaked. It might be that inexperience hadn't taught him subtlety yet, or the wisdom of masking the true depth of his ability, but this freshly minted Tide Lord was among the most powerful Cayal had ever encountered.

Cayal would get no answers if Hawkes let loose and dropped northern Senestra into the ocean. And there was a very real danger he might. Cayal had been where Hawkes was now—brimming with power, uncertain about what was happening to him. And absolutely no notion of what he was capable of doing.

Kordana had been wiped off the face of Amyrantha as a consequence.

“I doubt you know much of anything at all, Hawkes,” Cayal said, wondering if there was anything he could say that might head off this impending
disaster. “You certainly don't know as much as you think you do. And sure as the Tide is on the rise, you don't know what to do with all that power you're clinging to.” He turned to Arryl for help. Hawkes was here at her house, after all, so perhaps she had some influence over him. “Would you like to tell your little friend here what's going to happen if he
doesn't
let it go? Got a feeling he won't believe anything I tell him.”

“Cayal's right, Declan,” Arryl said soothingly. “You're dangerously close to doing something truly disastrous. Relax. The people of the wetlands don't deserve that.”

Although she'd not be able to feel him, gathering the Tide, even Arkady could feel the ground shaking. She took a step toward the spymaster. “Declan . . . please . . .”

The Tide surged around Hawkes. The channel started to foam around the dock. Far from placating him, Arkady's appeal seemed to be having the opposite effect. She stumbled backwards as if pushed, falling into Arryl, who caught her clumsily as she struggled to maintain her footing. The amphibians who'd brought Cayal's boat to the Outpost disappeared into the churning water with a squeal of fright.

“Declan, stop!” Arryl cried out, helping Arkady up. She clutched at Cayal's arm. “Do something!”

Do what?
was his first reaction, as the Tide welled up inside him to match the threat he could feel from the other man. He could stop Hawkes from unleashing the Tide, sure enough, but that would require him to give free rein to an equal amount of power. If they both let loose at the same time, the effect would be disastrous. Hawkes wouldn't know that, Cayal was certain, otherwise the fool wouldn't be trying to protect himself by drawing all the Tide he could manage to shield himself from the danger he clearly thought Cayal represented.

And then another thought occurred to Cayal.
Tides, with that much power to burn, we wouldn't need Elyssa to put an end to it all
 . . .
With me and Lukys, a few of the lesser immortals, Pellys, Kentravyon, and the power this unexpected immortal can draw on, we'd be able to do anything
 . . .

Even die, perhaps.

The thought stayed Cayal's hand.

He took a deep breath. “Let it go, Hawkes,” Cayal said, as calmly as he could manage. He let the Tide drain away, certain Hawkes would feel the gesture and hoping it would placate him. “We need to talk.”